Been a big weekend. Got completely smashed on Saturday night and after watching the election coverage down the pub with some Liberal mates I walked into the city singing at the top of my lungs and rampaged through a famous rock bar entertaining all and sundry with my humourous Mick Jagger impressions and bellowing drunk vocals. I did better than the last federal election because this time I managed to avoid being thrown out of the bar. Great night.
Whilst the result is still undecided it's safe to say the election was a big victory for the Liberals, at least in the moral sense. Labour's discraceful behaviour has been punished, they have lost their majority (and hence their legitimacy as Tony pointed out). To do that to a first term government is almost unprecidented especially one that started out so popular.
We smashed the ALP. Hazzzah!!!
Tony Abbott has entered the pantheon of Liberal gods. Menzies, Howard and Abbott are the leaders that will command the greatest loyalty and respect from their troops forever more. These are the Titans that truly took the nation forward, and continue to do so.
The chants of "Tony! Tony! Tony!" as he was speaking on election night echoed the feeling in my breast of admiration bordering on adoration for our fearless leader who went from being almost universally ridiculed in the media and polticians, even by his own party (and even himself !!) with the nickname "people skills" to showing a real warrior's discipline and if not delivering us victory, then delivering us the most glorious defeat since Gallipoli.
The difference hangs on one seat, Hasluck, where Ken Wyatt hopes to bear the Liberal standard as the first Indigenous elected into the lower house.
Here's the arithmetic:
I am at this point assuming that the 3 independents who are former Nationals would rather drink light beer in a tutu than side with the pack of lazy whingers that are the Labor party. The two deciding factors here will be the mining tax and Abbotts personably macho personality. I cant see Bob Katter respecting arch BS artist Gillard. I really can't. And i can't see any of them selling out their regions by backing the tax. I also think they will work as a block because they are much more powerful that way.
Also if they side with Labor, like the WA libs threatened to do after the election there, there will be a voter revolt expressed in a torrent of emails threatening to next time turf them out by voting for the coalition . Country people hate Labor if when their representatives don't.
So that means we need 73 seats to form government. 73 + 3 = 76 seats, the required majority.
We have 72 basically in the bag at the moment, as long as there is no postal vote flow to labour in the eastern state's closest electorates. Postals make up the majority of votes yet to be cast, and historically i'm told postals have favoured the Libs.
But that's still only 72, so we need Hasluck. Badly. I am told by insiders that the ALP did a huge postal vote campaign in Hasluck. So i'm a little scared.
Still if we lose Hasluck we might be saved if Labor lose Denison to the independent Andrew Wilkie. Wilkie's noises indicate that he does not think Labor has delivered the kind of "stable, competant and ethical government" that he says he wants to support. I think he would side with Abbott on must issues apart from boat people. That would give us a majority of 72 libs and 4 independents.
Having said that the ALP is tipped to take Denison. So this discussion is a bit academic.
It's Hasluck or nothing.
Well not nothing. We have our pride back. Howard's ghost is avenged. Maxine Makew (dont care to spell it right) is a journalist again. And she's leading the ill-disciplined back-biting that will destroy any ALP government that tries to cling to power.
There is one other possibility, although remote, and that's if we fail to win Hasluck and cannot govern even with the 3 independent former-Nationals. That does not mean these 3 will be able to enter into an agreement with the ALP. The mining tax might be a sticking point and if Oakshott is to be believed they'd send the country back to the polls. This is unlikely because that poll result could see the independents voted out for being too smart by half, and Gillard would almost certainly accept any ultimatum put to her by the independents that would allow her to hang on to power, even dropping the mining tax or totally gutting it.
For the ALP to lose would be oblivion. I personally think they would never recover. The myth that they stand up for the little guy would be forever dispelled. They have been so cynical and shifty they would have to rebrand themselves. I honestly dont think that's overstating it. Labor's brand is acknowledged as poison even by them, Gillard used the word "Labor" only twice in her campaign launch.
For us losing is OK. The coalition is back federally. We bring a kind of honest muscularity to political discourse in this country, and good hard-working salt-of-the-earth Aussie men and women love it xoxoxo
